Psychometric Evaluation of the Chinese Recovering Quality of Life (ReQoL) Outcome Measure and Assessment of Health-Related Quality of Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

ObjectiveThe primary objective was to translate the Recovering Quality of Life (ReQoL) measures from English to traditional Chinese and assess their psychometric properties in Hong Kong (HK) Chinese population. The secondary objective was to investigate the mental health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of this sample during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.MethodRecovering Quality of Life was translated to Traditional Chinese adhering to standard guideline recommended by the official distributors. Five hundred members of the general population were successfully recruited to participate in a telephone-based survey. The following psychometric properties of the ReQoL were evaluated: construct, convergent, and known-group validity and internal consistency and test–retest reliability. The item measurement invariance was assessed on the basis of differential item functioning (DIF). Multiple regression analysis was used to assess the relationship between respondents’ characteristics and mental HRQoL.ResultsResults of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported a two-factor structure of the ReQoL. The ReQoL showed significant correlations with the other mental health, quality of life, and well-being measures, which indicated a satisfactory convergent validity. Known-group validity confirmed that ReQoL is able to differentiate between people with different mental health status. The (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.91 and 0.76 for positive [PF] and negative [NF] factor), and McDonald’s omega of 0.89 (PF = 0.94, NF = 0.82) indicated the ReQoL has good reliability as well as test–retest reliability with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.75. Four items showed negligible DIF with respect to age. Respondents who were highly educated and without psychological problems reported a high ReQoL score.ConclusionTraditional Chinese ReQoL was shown to be a valid and reliable instrument to assess the recovery-focused quality of life in HK general population. Future studies are needed to appraise its psychometric properties in local people experiencing mental disorders.

Translation and linguistic validation of the Swedish recovering quality of life (ReQoL) – A brief research report

“…In Germany, ReQoL was used to assess patients with major depression, dysthymia, and bipolar affective disorder, indicating that ReQoL is a promising measure for use in clinical settings and within research ( 29 ). Thus, other ReQoL translations have implicated both good construct validity and reliability in different countries ( 19 , 20 , 28 , 29 ), in addition to the larger psychometric tests conducted in the British context ( 17 , 30 ).…”

“…The last stages consisted of testing and analyzing the reliability, as well as the validity of the ReQoL with ongoing psychometric evaluations ( 11 , 17 , 18 ). ReQoL has also been translated into different languages and cross-culturally validated in over 20 countries ( 19 – 22 ).…”

Measuring health-related quality of life and well-being: a head-to-head psychometric comparison of the EQ-5D-5L, ReQoL-UI and ICECAP-A

“…The ReQoL-UI, which was developed based on the ReQoL-20, comprising six mental health items (activity; belonging and relationships; choice, control and autonomy; hope; selfperception; and well-being) and one physical health item was administered [14]. The ReQoL-UI has been translated to Chinese and adapted for use in HK with the necessary permissions [23]. In the absence of HK specific preference weights, we used the UK preference weights to calculate the utility score in this study.…”

Psychometric evaluation of the German version of the Recovering Quality of Life (ReQoL) measures in patients with affective disorders

“…Recently, the ReQoL measures originally developed in English have been translated and linguistically validated in German using established methodology [16]. ReQoL measures are also available in other languages, such as Dutch [17], seven common Indian languages [18][19][20][21][22][23][24] and traditional Chinese [25].…”

“…So far, the psychometric properties of the ReQoL measures have been assessed in patients with anxiety and depression in the United Kingdom [29], in patients with psychosis in the Netherlands [17] and Singapore [30], in the general population in the United Kingdom [15] and Hong Kong [25] as well as in a convenience sample in the Netherlands [17]. For the patient populations, the ReQoL measures showed good internal consistency and better responsiveness and construct validity compared with the EQ-5D-5L in patients with depression, but not in patients with anxiety [29,30].…”